“Donglegate” is classic overreaction—and everyone pays

Or, how not to deal with difficult social issues.

Watching "Donglegate" unfold over the past few days has been like watching a comedy of errors slowly metastasize into a tragedy of thoughtlessness. News coverage of what unfolded at (and after) this year's PyCon developer conference has already been written; I'll assume that you’re up to speed. What follows is straight opinion about a silly situation.

As events unfolded from Sunday until today, partisans quickly formed to weigh in on some key questions. Was SendGrid evangelist Adria Richards right or wrong to take offense at the jokes in question? Were the two male developers out of bounds with their "dongle" comments? Did they even say the things they were accused of? Was taking the matter right to Twitter the wrong way to go? Was the termination of two people—including Richards herself—a preferred outcome? How did DDoS vigilantes get involved in a complaint over some genital jokes? Finally: how long until the lawsuits?

Let's start by spreading the blame where it's deserved: on nearly everyone involved. The "Boy’s Club” mentality is thankfully no longer acceptable in tech, but it's still common—some people have actually described tech to me as "men's work." The jokes appear to run afoul of PyCon's code of conduct, which strives to create a welcoming atmosphere for everyone, and their unfunny-ness is equaled only by their lameness. “Forking a repo” and “big dongles” must rank somewhere around "0.5: classless brospeak" on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women. While such sexually inappropriate comments are completely unnacceptable in professional settings (to many men as well as women), neither merits firing unless someone had a history of making unwelcome comments. A teaching opportunity should not generally be turned into a termination event. (PlayHaven, which employed both developers, says that it will not comment "on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways" with one developer, so it's not clear what the exact situation here was.)

Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers.

Yet these two men don’t get all of the blame. One recurring theme on message boards and chat rooms, including our own, is that while Richards had every right to report the behavior of the two men to conference organizers, snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to "Twitter shame" them was a step too far (speaking of a step too far, there are other, more repugnant recurring themes among commenters, too). They're right; going public was not the only way Richards could get a relatively minor issue addressed. She could have confronted the two men or she could have gone straight to PyCon. Her actions only escalated the situation.

In a blog post explaining the story in her own words, Richards wrote about how, over the course of the jokes, she moved from “I was going to let it go” to “I realized I had to do something.” The moment of decision came after seeing a picture of a young girl on the main stage who had attended a Young Coders workshop. “She would never have the chance to learn and love programming,” Richards wrote, “because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.”

Clearly, this is hyperbole. These two guys weren’t going to prevent anybody from doing anything. Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers. While denouncing bad behavior certainly has its place, proportion is important—and this approach to these jokes simply makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men's/women's issues in the workplace.

Richards decided that her method of intervention would combine public shaming on Twitter as well as pinging PyCon organizers to do something about the incident. Richards said that she “was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this.” This is why she did not confront the two men directly. Instead, she pinged PyCon and, well, the rest of the Internet. Sledgehammer, meet nail. (To its great credit, PyCon appears to have handled the issue well, speaking to both parties and securing an apology from the developers.)

In the aftermath, one of the developers lost his job and Richards eventually lost hers too. While I believe that Richards unfairly shamed these guys in public (two wrongs don’t make a right, as they say), PlayHaven and SendGrid emerge as the real reputational losers here. Ironically, the companies shared in the same core mistake Richards made. The asymmetry of incident and response has now elevated Donglegate from dust-up into life-changing event for at least two people, and it didn't have to end this way at all.

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.

What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.

A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

tl;dr: it's a bit of a 3-way:* They disagree (as many do) with the way she handled the event* They feel she can't effectively be a dev evangelist for them anymore (can't fault them on that)* She indirectly put the whole business and customers in dangers (which is probably a reference to the DDOS)

I came across that image while poking around for image ideas for this story, and Peter made an excellent observation: "dongle" jokes are obviously mainstream and tame enough that you can air them on the largest commercial broadcast in the world (eek hope that's true, it's big though!) and apparently no one blinks.

We don't know what the joke actually was, and I'm not even really trying to excuse it, but I do think it's fascinating that it's apparently part of our cultural experience, and not just limited to bearded programmers.

Everyone lost today. Tech, the Python community, the programming community, men, women, the 2 people who got fired, everyone.

Perhaps Adria should have exposed their behavior in some other way, like writing to the PyCon people directly, or turning around and speaking to the guys herself. But she didn't. And you know what? The "hey, look at these assholes!" pic and tweet kind of stuff happens all the time, all over the world. You or I have probably done something similar, but it just faded into the background of inane content that no one cares about. Regardless of her previous behavior online (which quite frankly, seems to be a little racist at times), I don't feel that she was in the wrong in this specific instance.

Basically, two dudes said something stupid. She tweeted "look at these assholes!" PlayHaven extremely overreacted by firing one of the dudes. Parts of the Python and perhaps parts of the general programming community extremely overreacted to Adria. SendGrid overreacted slightly by firing Adria.

Yes, SendGrid needs to have developer advocates that can represent their company in a good light. I think firing Adria right now makes them also look bad, in the "Sorry men, she's gone now, can we be friends again? kthxbye!" vein. What SendGrid should have done is give Adria a chance to quell the situation in SendGrid's favor, or at least give her guidance in how to do so. Maybe even suspend her, or some sort of internal corporate disciplinary action, and let this whole controversy end with time. Adria may learn from this on how to handle the internet dragon better, but SendGrid lost the opportunity to have this stronger person work for them. Maybe she won't learn anything from this, but the timing of her firing was still poor PR for SendGrid. Keep in mind, I still don't think her initial tweet was morally wrong.

SendGrid made the mistake of thinking that the few vocal assholes represents everyone. I'd bet the majority of the Python community just wishes that everyone would shut the fuck up and code. Unfortunately, in human behavior, the loud people get the attention, and online, those are assholes and trolls.

Unfortunately, PlayHaven and SendGrid were so afraid of the internet dragon, that they sacrificed two people to it in an attempt to appease. The thing is, the internet dragon is never appeased, it's never full, it's rage and fire never ends. All you can do is turn it's attention elsewhere, or hide until it moves on to other prey.

658 Reader Comments

This is not the first time there has been over reaction to sexist remarks from a man at a conference. Ted Tso, noted kernel hacker, was publicly announced to be a "rape apologist" for having the audacity to questions the methodologies and statistics in a report about rape. Why don't women understand that this kind of behavior is hurting their cause more than anything else. Its getting to the point that I don't want women around when I am with co-workers. One over bearing woman can end your career, why take the chance?

Always question methodology and statistics in any study all day everyday. That is the way to go to ensure no BS studies.

How that could ever be confused with being a "rape-apologist" is astounding.

Problem probably was that people generally dont understand that there is a difference between criticizing the methodology of a study and criticizing the result. It doesnt help that rape is a topic which makes any semblance of rationality go out the window.

If I were to hear what those two said, even in a more fanciful fashion, I would not have realized that it was a joke about the male genitalia.

In fact it is rather amazing she could have understood instantly and be so sure that the two men were making a sex joke. What if they were simply talking about a dongle with a rather large plastic casing?

This is not the first time there has been over reaction to sexist remarks from a man at a conference. Ted Tso, noted kernel hacker, was publicly announced to be a "rape apologist" for having the audacity to questions the methodologies and statistics in a report about rape. Why don't women understand that this kind of behavior is hurting their cause more than anything else. Its getting to the point that I don't want women around when I am with co-workers. One over bearing woman can end your career, why take the chance?

Always question methodology and statistics in any study all day everyday. That is the way to go to ensure no BS studies.

How that could ever be confused with being a "rape-apologist" is astounding.

I believe the question in particular that raised the ire of the detractors was along the lines:

"If a woman can not legally give consent if she is drunk, is a sober woman having sex with a drunk man committing rape?

There were other issues with the study but it was pretty clear that people didn't want to discuss what he had to say.

This is not the first time there has been over reaction to sexist remarks from a man at a conference. Ted Tso, noted kernel hacker, was publicly announced to be a "rape apologist" for having the audacity to questions the methodologies and statistics in a report about rape. Why don't women understand that this kind of behavior is hurting their cause more than anything else. Its getting to the point that I don't want women around when I am with co-workers. One over bearing woman can end your career, why take the chance?

That last bit is kind of misogynistic, don't ya think? To write of women all being of the same cause and "why take a chance"? I see the root of what you are saying, but holy, crispy jesus, man!

Overbearing types of all 3 genders can cause issues in the workplace. Life is just a minefield in that way.

For those who complain that the comments and the two articles on this site are leaning too heavily towards criticizing Miss Adria Richards I'd like to remind you that Jezebel has just recently posted their version and I believe the replies perhaps lean more towards your tastes.

Yeah, it can't possibly be because two people are carrying out a private conversation, it is because it is a concentrated effort to make women feel unwelcome

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She snapped a photo of the offending dudes (who, she notes, were expressly violating PyCon's code of conduct) and publicly tweeted it, politely requesting that PyCon administrators enforce their own code.

Yes, because public shaming and "polite request" are totally things you can put together.

Quote:

A few things. Yes, in the grand scheme of the entire earth, a few offhand jokes about "big dongles" are almost completely innocuous. In fact, I made pretty much exactly the same joke one million times, whenever my nerdy former roommate said he was looking for his "dongle" or he needed to go "dongle shopping." However, CONTEXT MATTERS. And the issue that a lot of (white) men seem to have trouble grasping is that not everyone gets to move through the world wrapped in the comfy presumption that every space is their space.

Lets forget about the question of it being offensive, it's clear she didn't find it so. Cause if some stupid joking about dongles was so offensive to her then she'd have never posted something on her twitter about sock stuffing. Just reality, as it is.

She's falsely outraged to advance some agenda. That's how the evidence plays out here.

She took a picture of two guys, who never had any inkling that she was doing it or what she was going to do with it (and would have never probably agreed to), in a blatant attempt to bully them.

Now she's using any nonsense she can conjure up to justify her behavior.

Bullies don't want to be seen as bullies, it negatively impacts their ability to effectively bully.

This just reminds me of some old ads I remembered, I thought from Megahertz/3com for their X-Jack, but I found this one:

Honestly though, I think the way this girl handled the issue is more likely to cause problems for women in tech than a couple dude cracking stupid jokes. Now when little what's her name grows up and wants to get a job, will the boss wonder if she will be the next one to cause a stink and get his company DDOS'd or boycotted? Maybe not fair, but she handled it badly and probably caused more damage to her "cause" than anyone else involved.

The people I know who tell the most, and dirtiest, jokes are all women...

and the people i know whove been raped or been fired because they wouldnt fuck the boss or been payed 30% less for the same work or had 2 jobs while being a single mom because the dad wouldnt pay child support or been beaten up or shoved around while pregnant and on and on and on... were all women.

people are really getting the idea of 'jokes' wrong. this is the only thing that Adria did wrong - using the word 'joke' is misleading. people keep getting confused, thinking these guys were having a private laugh between friends at an innocent joke. obviously thats not what happened - they could see her right there and they kept going and going and going. when you involve a third party with your private joke its not really an 'innocent joke' anymore.

I am totally missing the connection between what appears to be a bad pun and rape. Can you help me fill that line in?

It is pretty funny how she wasn't really upset herself about the dongle joke, but was only thinking about future generations who where destined to be devastated by the same outrage, which would invariably happen to them if she wouldn't intervene.

If I were to hear what those two said, even in a more fanciful fashion, I would not have realized that it was a joke about the male genitalia.

In fact it is rather amazing she could have understood instantly and be so sure that the two men were making a sex joke. What if they were simply talking about a dongle with a rather large plastic casing?

The man who made the dongle joke and was fired did post a rather classy public apology. He admitted that the dongle joke was in poor taste. But he absolutely denies that the repo forking comment was meant to be lewd in any way.

So is that zero tolerance for what she did (eavesdropping, taking a picture without consent, defamation of character) or zero tolerance for what the two guys did (make an off color joke between the two of them that someone else over heard and had an issue with, which I might add is similar to the twitter she made about the tube socks /cock joke she made)?

The people I know who tell the most, and dirtiest, jokes are all women...

and the people i know whove been raped or been fired because they wouldnt fuck the boss or been payed 30% less for the same work or had 2 jobs while being a single mom because the dad wouldnt pay child support or been beaten up or shoved around while pregnant and on and on and on... were all women.

people are really getting the idea of 'jokes' wrong. this is the only thing that Adria did wrong - using the word 'joke' is misleading. people keep getting confused, thinking these guys were having a private laugh between friends at an innocent joke. obviously thats not what happened - they could see her right there and they kept going and going and going. when you involve a third party with your private joke its not really an 'innocent joke' anymore.

I am totally missing the connection between what appears to be a bad pun and rape. Can you help me fill that line in?

You'd need to squit at it with a feminist bias in the back of your head to see it though.

The friendly bloggers and commenters at jezebel will be happy to fill you in on how dongle jokes are simply an insult to women everywhere and tantamount to threatening to rape every woman in a 30' radius

Never mind that they could also see roughly 50 other dudes sitting around while they talked about this.Here's where the radical feminists miss the point. If you want gender equality and want to be on the same level as everyone else, then you get to be on the same level as everyone else. You don't deserve to be targeted but neither do you get to take every slight personally as a targeted attack; people don't have to think about what they are saying MORE when you are around because you are just another person (that isn't to say that they don't have to think). Was this a stupid nerd joke? Yes it was. Was it insulting to women? Fuck if I know how considering literally no one has a transcript of what was said and all we have to go on is one lady's claim who also claimed racism is the sole providence of white people. Should people around them have been insulted? No. Should she have been EXTRA insulted because she was a woman? No. You either get to be another person in the crowd or you get to be a special person that everyone has to identify and consider individually and separately. Congratulations, feminists, you just made yourselves targets by forcibly making yourself an "other."

It seems our technology has given us in addition to their benefits more ways to shoots ourselves in the foot. The proverb "think before you speak [or act] has not come into play here. It's all reaction and overreaction at that. No one out of this whole mess is going to come out of this smelling of roses.

So is that zero tolerance for what she did (eavesdropping, taking a picture without consent, defamation of character) or zero tolerance for what the two guys did (make an off color joke between the two of them that someone else over heard and had an issue with, which I might add is similar to the twitter she made about the tube socks /cock joke she made)?

Let's start by spreading the blame where it's deserved: on nearly everyone involved.

...why?

The only thing we know for sure is that the accuser twitted a picture and accused the people in the picture of saying something unsavory.

We don't really know for sure what they said, what they were talking about, or if she even heard it correctly. It's possible she didn't know that "forking" and "dongles" are actual things in the real world that people discuss sometimes in a purely technical sense, but I think to assume that would be remarkably sexist. So I won't assume that.

So yeah, the "nearly everyone" necessarily has to exclude the two people she accused, at least until we have additional information about what they were actually saying.

I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of downvotes for this, but some things need to be said.

1. There is no such thing as reverse racism.2. There is no such thing as misandry.3. Saying that white people can and have suffered anything like the systematic oppression POC do is racist.4. Saying the same of men and women is misogynistic. Every last bit of discrimination men have ever suffered is a result of the patriarchy. 5. Equality is not as cut and dry as you'd like it to be.

1. Reverse racism is just a form of racism. It 100% exists, and anyone who believes otherwise is simply in denial of reality. Affirmative action is a legalized form of racism - if you make choices based on someone's race, then you are, in fact, being racist. The only fields in which race are important are fashion (where you need models of certain races to appeal to certain members of certain races) and acting (where a role requires someone of a specific race/ethnicity because that is part of who the character in question is). There are tons of people who are racist against white people. Millions of them.

2. This is utter nonsense, and only a complete moron would say something like this. Misandry exists. It is a massive force in our culture. Men are, in fact, treated differently than women, and the idea that "oh, its not misandry" is nonsense. There are tons of feminists who spread misandry, whose bile is quite nasty - they talk about how brutish and inferior men are, and how women are superior. The irony being oftentimes they are misogynistic in many ways as well, but no one ever said you can't be bad to both genders. But the truth is that while the insane fanatical feminists represent the worst of it, they don't represent the bulk of it. When men are sterotyped as horndogs, as being less sensitive and less emotionally available than women, when men are stereotyped as lacking common sense or of easily being wrapped around women's fingers, when men are objectified, that's all misandry. And it is incredibly common. There are things that many women feel uncomfortable discussing with men because they're men. That's misandry right there. If you feel uncomfortable talking with someone because of WHAT they are, rather than because of WHO they are, that's always a sign of prejudice.

The idea that misandry doesn't exist is utter nonsense of the highest order. There are women who discriminate against men, who treat men badly. There are programs which discriminate against men - I know that there were several engineering summer camps I wanted to go to but couldn't because I was a white male. That IS discrimination, doubly so when an equivalent local program for white males didn't exist.

The idea that being human garbage is restricted to white males is, in fact, both racist and misandrist.

3. Its not racist; you clearly don't understand what the word racism means. Racism means judging someone on the basis of their race. Saying that white people can and have suffered systematic oppression is not racist; it may or may not be correct, but it isn't racist.

Now, here's reality: most oppression in today's society is mythological in nature. Basically, if a white person has a bad run in with a cop, they think the cop is a jerk; if a black person has a bad run in with a cop, they think that the cop is racist. Its a form of excuse-making in order to divert blame from themselves onto others, and in order to make themselves feel better about themselves. "I'm not a failure because I dropped out of high school; I'm a failure because white people hate black people." Its a vile thing.

Is there still racism? Yes, yes there is. Is racism the exclusive domain of whites? No, no it isn't. And really ethnocentrism probably has a bigger role today than racism does - the reason that hispanics are discriminated against isn't because of race but rather ethnicity, their place of origin (or percieved place of origin, as well as percieved immigration status). Hispanics who speak english without an accent are much better recieved in society; the same is true of black people who speak like someone from the Northeast or West rather than sounding like they're from the south or "da hood".

In modern society, affirmative action programs and similar DO discriminate against white people, it IS systematic, and it IS legalized, and the people who benefit from it claim that anyone who wants to tear down the program is racist because they are themselves racist human garbage (or simply cynically using it to advance themselves). There are numerous programs that discriminate against whites (and asians) in favor of lesser performing blacks and latinos, and that is wrong. This happens, and it is empirical fact.

You will find people who claim that the legal system discriminates against blacks and latinos. However, careful study reveals that such "discrimination" is far, far more limited than people claim. Latinos, for instance, primarily have a higher crime rate than whites because they are younger, more male, less educated, and poorer than the white population; once you deal with those factors, the higher hispanic crime rate goes away. Blacks, on the other hand, simply commit more crimes (vastly more crimes) per capita than white people do. Why? Who knows. But its just an empirical fact - the data is overwhelming. Over 50% of murders in the US where we know who did the killing are committed by blacks, who make up a mere 1/8th of the population. This isn't racism at work - this is reality. If a group commits far more crimes per capita, then it is going to go to jail far more often per capita.

The most horrifying statistic, perhaps, is this though: blacks commit a thousand times more rapes on white women than white men commit on black women per national FBI statistics. That's a messed up statistic. That's a SEVERELY messed up statistic. It seems completely ridiculous. And yet, it is so. That's so far beyond "reporting differences" that it is simply insane.

4. Again, you don't understand the word misogyny. Misogyny means "hatred of females". It is not misogynistic to claim that men have been discriminated against by women.

And in any case, the idea that "every last bit of discrimination men have ever suffered is the result of the patriarchy" is silly. Firstly, the idea of "the patriarchy" is moronic bullshit; it is not a monolithic thing, nor was it ever. Secondly, men have been discriminated against by women, both in the past and in the present, when women have had the power to do so; it has long been a feature of social circles at the very least, and in more present years women have indeed discriminated against men.

Modern day discrimination is much less powerful than it was historically, so yes, men have not been subjected to the worst of what women have been subjected to. But its really irrelevant.

5. Equality means "you are judged on who you are". Equality does not mean that because group X makes up X% of the population that they should make up X% of everything; that is just nonsense and unrealistic. Not all people are created equal; some people are, inherently stronger, faster, tougher, smarter, healthier, more physically appealing, more agile, more flexible, more resistant to disease, less prone to exhaustion, and otherwise in better condition than you are due to genetics. Additionally, some people are raised in more affluent environments, affording them access to better nutrition as well as to resources which are less available to the population at large - personal swimming pools, tutors, and other advantages, not to mention living in a better environment with better, happier people with better personal lessons to teach them and better role models. The idea that "all men are created equal" is a pretty lie, but it is a lie, it always was a lie, and it will always be a lie. There is no such thing as absolute equality; equality, then, must like in treating people on the basis of who they are and what they do.

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In comparison, the experience of oppression to white people will always be trumped by POC. It's specious to cite examples like that in the terms we're discussing.

Ah yes, the discrimination olympics. "I am the most oppressed!"

The worst group of all are the retard "social justice" people, who are by far the most entitled feeling of any group on the basis of being "discriminated against" and wearing it as if it was a badge of messed-up honor.

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Women have never hunted**, or as a result had to run from predators, as always, this is about how deep our pussy worship is, and how misandric the world is.

Women hunted in hunter/gatherer societies. They hunted LESS than men did, but that did not mean that they did not, in fact, hunt or participate in hunting. They fished, they set snares, and they killed animals for meat just as men did; the fact that women tended towards more towards gathering while men tended more towards hunting does not mean that there was not significant overlap. Female gatherers certainly hunted opportunistically, while male hunters likewise gathered opportunistically, even while doing their "usual" roles, and it is apparent that in many such societies women go out on actual hunts and men go out to gather stuff as actual activities beyond mere opportunism.

This is unsurprising; why wouldn't they?

vstojkovic wrote:

And yes, I know that Twitter is a "public channel" and that the conversation was "meant to be private". First of all, "this conversation is meant to be private" doesn't give you any reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. But more importantly, whether it's public or private is beside the point: the difference is between participating by your own choice (by following someone on Twitter) and participating by someone else's choice (because you happen to be within an earshot in a public place).

The difference is that sound dies, twits don't.

In other words, if I call you a bitch at a conference, the only people who hear me call you a bitch are the people within earshot.

If I call you a bitch online, everyone in the world until the website goes down can hear me call you a bitch.

Speaking online is much -less- private than speaking at a conference.

You can ignore people who are talking around you.

dbright wrote:

and the people i know whove been raped or been fired because they wouldnt fuck the boss or been payed 30% less for the same work or had 2 jobs while being a single mom because the dad wouldnt pay child support or been beaten up or shoved around while pregnant and on and on and on... were all women.

Well, seeing as men can't get pregnant, that's kind of a given. However, men do in fact get beaten up and shoved around quite often. Having two jobs is something many men end up doing, and sometimes the woman doesn't work at all in those situations - I know at least one person who had THREE jobs and a wife who didn't work at all. I've known people who knew guys with two jobs and no wife because she was dead or fled. And I'm sure there have been numerous guys who have been fired for refusing to have sex with their boss, be that boss male or female.

Really though, you probably should have an abortion if the dude isn't going to be there to help. Don't want to propagate those genes.

Oh, and FYI the whole "30% less" thing is bullshit. The average woman DOES get paid less than the average man, but that's not because women get ripped off - its because women don't do the same jobs that men do, don't do them for as long, don't take as many risks, don't work in as risky of jobs, don't work as much overtime, and innumerable other factors.

Women who do the exact same work, work as often, and are of the same competency and experience level as their male colleagues make the same amount of money as men do.

The pay differential between men and women is not rooted in misogyny, it is rooted in life choices that men and women make. The truth is that the housewife factor alone (taking time off to raise kids) and hours worked account for a huge percentage of the differential. If you have fewer years of experience working, you make less money. If you work fewer hours, you make less money - even if you're salaried, because they'll give your colleague more money than they give you for working more, even though you aren't paid hourly.

jmfirth wrote:

I wager that many employers don't see much of a difference either way. Employers seem to be awfully interested in what their employees do on social network accounts. See this and this.

I will note that one of my previous employers (at Lionbridge) had a very good policy as far as social accounts go:

He will not friend you on Facebook or other social media sites as long as he is your employer, because he does not want to have to fire you for something you post there.

Its a case of willful ignorance, but its a good way of doing things. If, however, you work in PR... yeah, you're boned. CEOs, PR managers, ect. don't HAVE private accounts unless they are hidden and secreted away, and even THEN it can still blow back in your face and the company's face.

Most good employers don't care what you have to say on social media and don't want to know what you say on social media as long as you aren't hurting their business.

TechGeek wrote:

This is not the first time there has been over reaction to sexist remarks from a man at a conference. Ted Tso, noted kernel hacker, was publicly announced to be a "rape apologist" for having the audacity to questions the methodologies and statistics in a report about rape. Why don't women understand that this kind of behavior is hurting their cause more than anything else. Its getting to the point that I don't want women around when I am with co-workers. One over bearing woman can end your career, why take the chance?

Its not terribly surprising. Its like genetic studies on intelligence; people don't want to know the truth because it destroys their carefully built up world view of lies.

The truth is that the rape studies often put forward by rape advocates are deeply flawed; the actual rape rate is massively lower than what it is often purported to be, and rapes are not distributed normally across the population anyway - if you have been raped previously, your odds of being raped again are far higher than a woman that has never been raped at all.

Quote:

"If a woman can not legally give consent if she is drunk, is a sober woman having sex with a drunk man committing rape?

Of course, the whole thing is nonsense to begin with. Being drunk does not mean you are unable to give consent; the crazy people who claim otherwise are just that, crazy. If you are unable to give consent, or have otherwise been rendered unable to resist, then it is rape (well, if you want it to be anyway).

The only thing we know for sure is that the accuser twitted a picture and accused the people in the picture of saying something unsavory.

We don't really know for sure what they said, what they were talking about, or if she even heard it correctly. It's possible she didn't know that "forking" and "dongles" are actual things in the real world that people discuss sometimes in a purely technical sense, but I think to assume that would be remarkably sexist. So I won't assume that.

Thats pretty far out there, my grandmother knows that a dongle is a thing and she doesnt even know not to write the entire email in the subject line. Yes, she is extremely passive aggressive and strikes me as a bit unhinged but that doesnt mean she is a drooling moron. You really think that someone who has worked in tech for a significant amount of time has never heard of a dongle?

Seraphiel wrote:

So yeah, the "nearly everyone" necessarily has to exclude the two people she accused, at least until we have additional information about what they were actually saying.

You know one of them admitted to making a dongle joke and apologized right? What more information are you waiting on?

I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of downvotes for this, but some things need to be said.

1. There is no such thing as reverse racism.2. There is no such thing as misandry.3. Saying that white people can and have suffered anything like the systematic oppression POC do is racist.4. Saying the same of men and women is misogynistic. Every last bit of discrimination men have ever suffered is a result of the patriarchy. 5. Equality is not as cut and dry as you'd like it to be.

Are you stupid?

This the exact response I expected to get.

Actually, all of that has occurred. POC are not magically better than any other humans. Almost any group, given the opportunity to oppress another group, has done so. You may not have lived in locations where white people are a minority, but I have, and can assure you that systematic oppression, "reverse" racism, and misandry can and does exist.

For the two men, they are chattering away at a conference with a cheap dick joke. While I sympathize with anyone who has to sit through one of these things, there are folks who really do want to hear what the speaker has to say, and the dongle joke ... you know jokes are only funny the first and third times you tell them, right?

For the posters who are ranting at feminism or anything more than what happened, you do realize that women are often sensitive to this stuff for a reason. We men constantly are rating them on their looks and perceived sexual prowess, and all sorts of other more egregious slights. Some guys might be a bit touchy if they had to suffer all that themselves. I speak on the phone higher than I speak in person, and since I don't always bother to correct the listener's perception of my gender, you'd be surprised at all the comments and "you sweet honey"-type remarks I've heard.

For Richards ... uff da. She really has a grandiose sense of self-importance. Her claim to being spurred to action by the picture of the little girl and having to snap the picture of the two boors for her is just over-the-top. She did it for herself, and needs to stop thinking she helped any cause or that she even had one (whatever it was; she says she isn't a feminist, which would be pretty much correct if she did this). And there are channels for handling this at the conference for a reason. Not only did she bring undo attention to herself and the two men and everyone's jobs, she also brought unneeded attention to the conference, which really didn't do anything wrong. And honestly, she needs to admit that she misunderstood the forking remark and the guy really didn't say anything wrong, and do it publicly.

For the Jezebel writer and the like, none of the remarks were sexist. Making a bad dongle joke (all dongle jokes are bad, I guess, because they're obvious) isn't disparaging women at all, or even talking about them. And again, they missed the forking remark completely; they need to admit they shouldn't get into a snit when they don't understand the lingo.

For PlayHaven and SendGrid and PyCon ... you know, I don't have too much bad to say, which makes me feel odd since I usually bash the employers. We don't know what else happened with the programmer at PlayHaven; mr-hank may well have other offenses on his record. The other guy wasn't fired, after all. It's pretty obvious that Richards wasn't interested in doing her job and brought unneeded attention to her employer; if it hadn't been Anonymous, there was a large conference of developers whose attendees might well have complained to her employer. PyCon saying that it didn't approve of the programmers' behavior and of Richards's public shaming, that's the right thing.

And Anonymous ... stick to shaming the Syrian government or Israeli government or American government or the Scientology cult. Not only do you guys not know everything (see above), this is also trivial nonsense.

This is classic blame the victim journalism. The issue is not her "overreaction." If you make asshole comments in public than you are susceptible to the public finding out that you are an asshole (see the Mitt Romney 47% video). There is nothing wrong with her tweeting their photographs. Anyone who feels they should be able to make women feel uncomfortable with inappropriate remarks deserves to be publicly shamed. This is not simply "classless brospeak" but is the the entire reason for the male dominant culture in the tech community. See this article http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/0 ... exist-sxsw

I hate to quote myself but...

ALLCAPS wrote:

Am I missing something? I fail to see how a dongle joke is misogynistic or aggressive towards women.

I made that comment several hours ago, I think that it is a bit telling that no one bothered to explain it.

AShe triumphed in her complaint (which was even more overwrought and silly than this) so now everyone is walking on egg shells and we all pretty much hate her. She has poisoned the entire work environment to the point where some of us are looking for another job.

When it comes to SendGrid, I don't know. They were basically in a Charybdis & Scylla situations as they were getting blackmailed via DDOS over the mess: I may be wrong, but I believe they had been pretty much entirely unavailable since things starting going south ~2 days ago.

So they were in the unenviable position of supporting Adria and making all their customers pay (because these customers had been without service since the start of the DDOS and would remain so until the trolls would get bored or SendGrid brought in DDOS mitigation expert and they did their magic) or resuming service to customers at the cost of Adria's employment. I've never had to make this kind of shitty choice, and I seriously hope I'll never have to, the way I see it they were pretty likely to lose either way.

PlayHaven I can't see a good side of, the CEO's purportedly clarifying blog post doesn't clarify anything and looks like a tentative ass-covering lawyerspeak, the non-publication of any comment made on the blog (I'm sure there were comments) does not help.

Quote:

SendGrid probably could've picked better timing for their decision, but I view it as both sensible and inevitable.

Well I don't know what their official party line is, but it's pretty obvious they fired her in order to make the DDOS stop and be able to resume service to customers (it worked too), they weren't really in control of timing (as opposed to playhaven)

If so then in this case I'm glad DDOS worked. If no one had been fired then this whole thing would have been a big meh, but some dude with three kids and a penchant for dongle jokes lost his job.

In descending order of who was in the wrong:PlayhavenAdriaThe two guysSendgrid.

It's a sad day when someone decides to set off a "tac-nuke" for some wrong doing which just screwed everyone over and causes more harm than good.(for any Stargate SG1 fans, this "screw proportional response" mentality reminds me of the episode titled "Absolute Power")

That said, Amanda Blum's write-up/opinion was a good read and reassuring to see that not all will go nu-clear.

Everyone lost today. Tech, the Python community, the programming community, men, women, the 2 people who got fired, everyone.

Perhaps Adria should have exposed their behavior in some other way, like writing to the PyCon people directly, or turning around and speaking to the guys herself. But she didn't. And you know what? The "hey, look at these assholes!" pic and tweet kind of stuff happens all the time, all over the world. You or I have probably done something similar, but it just faded into the background of inane content that no one cares about. Regardless of her previous behavior online (which quite frankly, seems to be a little racist at times), I don't feel that she was in the wrong in this specific instance.

Basically, two dudes said something stupid. She tweeted "look at these assholes!" PlayHaven extremely overreacted by firing one of the dudes. Parts of the Python and perhaps parts of the general programming community extremely overreacted to Adria. SendGrid overreacted slightly by firing Adria.

Yes, SendGrid needs to have developer advocates that can represent their company in a good light. I think firing Adria right now makes them also look bad, in the "Sorry men, she's gone now, can we be friends again? kthxbye!" vein. What SendGrid should have done is give Adria a chance to quell the situation in SendGrid's favor, or at least give her guidance in how to do so. Maybe even suspend her, or some sort of internal corporate disciplinary action, and let this whole controversy end with time. Adria may learn from this on how to handle the internet dragon better, but SendGrid lost the opportunity to have this stronger person work for them. Maybe she won't learn anything from this, but the timing of her firing was still poor PR for SendGrid. Keep in mind, I still don't think her initial tweet was morally wrong.

SendGrid made the mistake of thinking that the few vocal assholes represents everyone. I'd bet the majority of the Python community just wishes that everyone would shut the fuck up and code. Unfortunately, in human behavior, the loud people get the attention, and online, those are assholes and trolls.

Unfortunately, PlayHaven and SendGrid were so afraid of the internet dragon, that they sacrificed two people to it in an attempt to appease. The thing is, the internet dragon is never appeased, it's never full, it's rage and fire never ends. All you can do is turn it's attention elsewhere, or hide until it moves on to other prey.

Anatomical jokes, while crude, are not inherently sexist or misogynist.

Yup, it would have been more sexist to not say them.

She sounds just plain selfish and egotistical. She made what was probably an accidental overreaction (she didn't think ahead) and rather than lose face by playing nice she filled herself with righteous indignation.

On a completely different note, can I propose a moratorium on "-gating" news stories? The original Watergate was the name of a hotel, not a scandal related to water.

I know it's a popular trend but it doesn't make any sense and seeing "Donglegate" in a headline on Ars feels like... setting the bar a little low? This article on Wikipedia really drives home how redundant the practice is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sc ... %22_suffix

Everyone lost today. Tech, the Python community, the programming community, men, women, the 2 people who got fired, everyone.

Perhaps Adria should have exposed their behavior in some other way, like writing to the PyCon people directly, or turning around and speaking to the guys herself. But she didn't. And you know what? The "hey, look at these assholes!" pic and tweet kind of stuff happens all the time, all over the world. You or I have probably done something similar, but it just faded into the background of inane content that no one cares about. Regardless of her previous behavior online (which quite frankly, seems to be a little racist at times), I don't feel that she was in the wrong in this specific instance.

Basically, two dudes said something stupid. She tweeted "look at these assholes!" PlayHaven extremely overreacted by firing one of the dudes. Parts of the Python and perhaps parts of the general programming community extremely overreacted to Adria. SendGrid overreacted slightly by firing Adria.

Yes, SendGrid needs to have developer advocates that can represent their company in a good light. I think firing Adria right now makes them also look bad, in the "Sorry men, she's gone now, can we be friends again? kthxbye!" vein. What SendGrid should have done is give Adria a chance to quell the situation in SendGrid's favor, or at least give her guidance in how to do so. Maybe even suspend her, or some sort of internal corporate disciplinary action, and let this whole controversy end with time. Adria may learn from this on how to handle the internet dragon better, but SendGrid lost the opportunity to have this stronger person work for them. Maybe she won't learn anything from this, but the timing of her firing was still poor PR for SendGrid. Keep in mind, I still don't think her initial tweet was morally wrong.

SendGrid made the mistake of thinking that the few vocal assholes represents everyone. I'd bet the majority of the Python community just wishes that everyone would shut the fuck up and code. Unfortunately, in human behavior, the loud people get the attention, and online, those are assholes and trolls.

Unfortunately, PlayHaven and SendGrid were so afraid of the internet dragon, that they sacrificed two people to it in an attempt to appease. The thing is, the internet dragon is never appeased, it's never full, it's rage and fire never ends. All you can do is turn it's attention elsewhere, or hide until it moves on to other prey.

All in all, it's a bad day for our industry.

I agree with you. Playhaven is the one that really upped the ante. Otherwise this would have faded just into the sea of similar stuff, as you described. I think sendgrid is the only party that didn't overreact, given the position they found themselves in.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.